14Feb 07

Since mean-spriritedness is in the air (not here obv, but in other places and of course on the emo kid / indie kid / Tanya Pink Floyd articles) I thought I would respond to Alan’s continuation to the Digg 9 Things The non-tech savvy do to…. (Ha Ha, linking like that so it causes a posting trackback is one of those things which I am sure annoys the IT guys gals).

The thing is I am not an IT expert, but I am a bit tech savvy. I fall between these two stools. But unfortunately the IT guys/gals here lump everyone who does not work in their area in the same boat. So here are my highly subjective nine.

1: Have you tried turning it off and on again? YES! YES! OF COURSE I BLOODY HAVE!
2: When the come and fix something, they never check that it is fixed with my login. Of course it works when you have admin privileges. Computers somehow know…
3: “This didn’t happen with Windows 98, NT, DOS, with a MAC…. Well its nice to have a history of the world of computing problems, but it is happening now.
4: “You’ll need to download the update.” But I don’t have admin privileges. “Oh we’ll come down next week some time.”
5: Have you tried using Mozilla? IF YOU WANT ME TO USE FIREFOX, DOWNLOAD IT FOR ME WHEN YOU INSTALL THE MACHINE. SEE ADMIN PRIVILGES.
6: We don’t support that application. WHY HAVE YOU PUT IT ON MY COMPUTER THEN?
7: Take six months to respond to any query.
8: “Who fixed this?” – “I did.” – “Oh. You really shouldn’t have done it that way”. – “Well I didn’t have six months to waste waiting. My time is important too.”
9: Smell.

In the end, this war of attrition is because two groups of people (the It geeks and the non-tech savvy) really have nothing in common at all, and find each others positions difficult to identify with. Those of us in the middle, and there are a lot of us, often take the flak. The ideal IT support situation actually would be one where every department has a slightly competent tech savvy person who gets a bit of extra money to do the support in their office. We understand old George’s issues with the on button, and we appreciate that 80% of IT queries are routine, and we can fix ’em. This would free up It to do the proper training and the tricky problems.

I got them to give me Workstation Only admin privs in the end cos I kept badgering them. Now I can watch DVD’s at work. And download nonsense but it involves slight fannydangle to do it, which is enough to stop me downloading every bit of nonsense I come across.

8. Of course, the flipside to this is people who come along saying “I’ve broken (whatever)” & you ask what’s happened & it transpires that instead of coming to tell you that they had broken (simpler thing), they tried to fix it themselves &, inevitably, broke it worse. This is particularly galling since I *don’t* do 4 or 7 & in the vast majority of cases have a this-working-day turnaround (immediate response if whatever it is is a showstopper).

Agreed that some variation on 1 is inescapable (because the time you don’t try the Obvious Solution is the time when it would have worked), & the rest are down to IT-person rubbishness.

The ideal IT support situation actually would be one where every department has a slightly competent tech savvy person who gets a bit of extra money to do the support in their office.

Or just get the most tech savvy person on your team to do it anyway with no extra money. Yes Jim, I know how to open .pdf files. Yes of course I can show you how. I’m only arsing around on the internet anyway, I’m not busy…

That’s why in the ideal world they get paid a bit more to do it. Like I get paid a bit more to be a first aider. ITS FIRST AID FOR COMPUTERS.

1. Actually gets more complicated, mainly because when you try to describe to them what happens on screen over the phone, they tend to use a smokescreen of tech jargon to confuse you.

My favourite was when I got a new computer last year which would crash (ie power failure) after 32 minutes. My diagnosis (fucked power supply) was ignored for over two weeks while they reinstalled windows, and double checked I wasn’t unplugging it on purpose. The interim solution (save everything every minute) clearly worked up to a point, but they were keen on ignoring the complex diagnostics I had done myself (ie timing each power crash to within a minute each way of 32).

8: I have one branch manager I have to support who has a habit of trying to fix things – or, just interfere with them himself – and then denying all knowledge. He also actively refuses to help us diagnose things. This is a real conversation I had over the phone once:

Manager’s minion: The fax program isn’t working. We can’t send any faxes.

Me: Can you tell me when it was last working properly?

Manager’s minion: Well, I think it was working properly last week, but I’m not completely sure.

Manager (muffled, in the background): Don’t answer any questions! Just tell them they’ve got to come and fix it.

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About the Author

Pete Baran: Half formed opinions on everything, three quarter formed opinions on film so that's my main topic of discussion. Started Pumpkin State and Pumpkin Pubs in 2000 which got incorporated in a Great News For All Our Readers style in 2004 into Freaky Trigger.

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